Effective and Efficient Provision of Government Services in French or English to the Citizens of New Brunswick

In this upcoming elections there is obvious discontent with how the current government has interpreted and set policies under the Official Language Act adopted by the government. The Liberal party motive exceeds the intent of the Act and the PC and Alliance party have come out with their solutions which mean little under the current Act. The current Act needs to be refined as intended to pertain to unique regional needs of the citizens not a geographic area.

The purpose of the Official Language Act was to ensure government services are received and understood by the citizens of New Brunswick be it in English or French. The purpose of the official Language Act was not to create a bilingual province. It is about people not institutions or governments.

So how do we ensure provincial services are delivered under the Act effectively and efficiently. First it can not happen. The Act itself administered today is a money hog providing little value to the majority of the citizens either French speaking or English. it is broken but deemed to politically volatile to be addressed. The province of New Brunswick adopted the federal Act with minimal changes. The federal act without major modification does not positively contribute to a prosperous province but customizing the Act to satisfy all the stakeholders in NB can create a unique place to live without penalizing any of it's citizens. Let us take a look at an overview of the Act.

The first Official Languages Act, enacted in 1969, recognized the equal status of English and French throughout the federal administration. Its primary goal was to ensure that Canadian citizens had access to federal services in the official languageof their choice. As a federal act, the Official Languages Act is only applicable to federal institutions and cannot be applied to provincial or municipal governments or to private businesses. The Official Languages (Communications with and Services to the Public) Regulations.

How is it determined that an office is required to provide services in both official languages?To determine whether there is significant demand for service in the minority official language, the size of the linguistic minority population in the regionis taken into account, as well as the proportion of that population to the total population of that region. An office may also be required to provide services in both official languages if its mandate is related to public health or safety, or if it is deemed reasonable for it to do so because of its location or its national or international mandate. The minority population threshold is set at5%of the area being served.

The consequences for New Brunswick continuing to operate under the existing interpretation of the Official Language Act. is bankruptcy. A place of no return. Federal government take over of the province. We will have less status of the Northwest Territories. Receivers for the provinces creditors will be put in charge of running the province and collecting debt. At that stage the province's acts and policies will be nullified due to creditor priority. At that stage it will become obvious that the Official Language Act is the one of the primary vessels to bankruptcy and everyone looses especially the citizens of new Brunswick.

SolutionThere is a solution to void these consequences that are caused by the Official Language Act. The solution is to allow New Brunswick citizen to make modification to the Act that are more relevant to the New Brunswick landscape. The four areas that can be changed are;1. The definition of regions specific to NB. A region is defined as a geographic area. 2. The services that are deemed essential for the health and safety of the citizens of New Brunswick3. The percentage of the populations that would indicate both language services are required for that region and service.​4. A New Brunswick definition of "language of their choice" by service.

The above must be addressed on two fronts services to the public and the public services internal operations. Two distinctly different understanding of the Official language Act. Both determined by the people not the public service.

In my assessment no solutions can be presented until the above is addressed. The secondary or primary factor that must be considered when dealing with changes is the cost of providing services to the public. We need to obtain a cost of service per 1000 citizens at a manageable level. As it is said you cannot provide champaign on a beer budget. I suggest a process similar to a zero based budget exercise be employed to determine the extent of the answers to the four areas identified above.

​I know that this suggested approach will not be considered by either powerful linguistic lobby group or the civil service unions. It appears they forget that to 90% of the total New Brunswick population that language of serve is not on their top 10 priorities of their life or what they want from government.

In my next post I may take a stab at addressing the four areas outlined. My concern is that change will only happen in this area by force caused by a provincial bankruptcy. This will be caused not by the will of the people but lack of will power by the elected representatives of the people.